Happy New Year!

The turn of the year. A time for looking back and giving thanks - see the eloquent post 'To Glorify Things Just Because That Are' on this great blog (December 28). My year was, abundantly, one of discoveries - among them Shirley Hazzard (this time last year I had not read her! It seems incredible...), William Maxwell, the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Rebecca Goldstein's extraordinary Betraying Spinoza, the late novels of Penelope Fitzgerald, the critical essays of V.S. Pritchett (The Essential Pritchett is surely one of the most richly rewarding single volumes of the 20th century). Then there has been much rereading and rediscovery - including the delight of finding The Leopard as great and as magical as I remembered it from my teenage years.
Other discoveries include, miscellaneously, the Musée Angladon in Avignon, the wide-skied beauty of Dutch Zeeland, Birdsong radio, the paintings of Robert Dukes, the Carmenere grape (and Menetou-Salon, and the Spanish aperitif Pacharan), the King of Shaves Azor (a mad new razor which has given me much simple pleasure) - and, of course, the joy of cravats. Along the way I've had, despite the grim summer, some wonderful butterfly experiences, including a thrilling encounter with a purple hairstreak in my own garden... And I was happily and amazingly reunited with two old friends I hadn't seen in more than 35 years. And, of course, this was the year in which I finally started my own blog. I have not for one moment regretted it.
More than enough to be thankful for there (along with health, loved ones and paid employment). What strikes me is how much of what I've enumerated has been related in some way or another to the great wide world of the web, and in particular to the circle of like-minded souls in the blogosphere who have sent me off in so many rewarding directions and, as a result, hugely enlarged my experience and enjoyment of life. Whatever may be said against blogging, in the right hands and minds it is hugely enriching (in a non-material sense, needless to say) and, in the best sense, educative. It is now for me an essential element in a vital life-enhancing, life-enlarging process of endless discovery and rediscovery. As I look back thankfully, I thank all you out there who have contributed so much to my year, and I hope you have found my thoughts and hints and recommendations as rewarding as I have found yours.
Oh and my Book of the Year is Me Cheeta. I think it was the only newly published book I read, actually...
A Happy New Year to all who read this!

Desert Island Book?

A curious thing happened on Desert Island Discs the other day. The guest was Baroness Haleh Afshar - I must confess I hadn't heard of her, but, as a Muslim feminist and enemy of the Iranian Ayatollahs' thugocracy, she had an interesting tale to tell. Come the end of the programme, she was invited to choose a book to take with her to the notional desert island, in addition to the Bible and Shakespeare that are, quite rightly, provided. When she opted for the Koran, she was told she couldn't have two religious texts. This seems harsh, even misguided, and I hadn't noticed this rule being applied before. You'd have thought in these multicultural, pluralist times, the BBC would be keen to encourage variety in this field - but apparently not...
I've really no idea which book I'd take myself (choosing those eight records is hard enough). It seems like an impossible choice. Has anyone out there got a Desert Island Book lined up for when the call comes? Remember - religious texts are not allowed. I don't make the rules...

'Fast losing its compassion'

Look here upon this story, and on this. Both demonstrate a radical cluelessness about what's wrong with the NHS and how it could be made better. Both in fact demonstrate how far that great bloated monster of an institution has drifted from its proper purpose and business (as have so many other institutions, but the NHS dwarfs them all) - and why is this? Precisely because of endless managerial interference, with the consequent bloating of a self-serving bureaucracy, the never-ending attempt to quantify and rank everything and to reduce it to boxes that can be ticked, targets that can appear to be met. The process itself, in all its ramifications, overwhelms everything - including what used to be meant by professionalism and judgment - and you end up with an NHS which is indeed 'fast losing its compassion' - along with its efficacy and its capacity to do the job it is supposed to do, which is to heal people or, failing that (and every bit as important) make them feel better. One looks back fondly to the old days when GPs understood that their job, as often as not, was to keep the patient entertained while nature effected a cure. Now their patients are in effect being invited to comment on the quality of the entertainment, in a singularly fautous exercise that certainly will not develop an Amazon-style market in the practice of medicine. How could it, as long as medicine is practised by real doctors in real geographical locations - unlike the online virtual market(non)place? 'Feedback' of the kind proposed merely encourages the permanently aggrieved (and idle) and makes no difference to anything - none in the right direction anyway. Still, it gives the scary Ben Bradshaw his moment in the limelight while things are quiet between Christmas and New Year.

Harry and Randy

Over Christmas, I heard quite a lot of this album, which was definitely one of the best things the wildly wayward Harry Nilsson ever did - and, in effect, one of the best Randy Newman albums. Nilsson was blessed with a remarkable, even beautiful voice, and it does wonders for these early Newman songs (as the album did for Newman's profile). If you don't know it, it's well worth seeking out...

Harold and Eartha

Thanks, everybody, for your cheering Christmas messages. I am now back from my five-day silent tribute to the late Harold Pinter...
Harold Pinter... (the ... is a quote, of course) - was he half as good as he was cracked up to be? I've always suspected he might have owed his success to mastering a particular clever trick of suggesting everything, stating nothing, and using it to the hilt - to good theatrical effect, creating tension and menace galore. But really was there anything much there? His plays feel hollow and unsatisfactory - trivial even - compared to those of Beckett (from whom, clearly, Pinter learned a lot). Of course, when it comes to theatre (and, indeed, new 'literary' novels), critical standards are pretty indulgent, coloured by a conviction that theatre (like the 'literary' novel) is somehow a Good Thing - and helped along, in the case of theatre, by the determination of a paying audience to convince themselves they haven't wasted their money. In the hothouse atmosphere of the theatrical world, adulation - whether merited or not - thrives. As for Pinter's 'poetry' - had it been written by anyone else, it would surely never have been taken seriously for a moment, would it?
Eartha Kitt also died over Christmas. Here was a woman who had a remarkable life - outlined here. I remember she gave an extraordinarily emotional interview to Anthony Clare in his radio series In The Psychiatrist's Chair, in which she looked back over her traumatic early years and the frequent wrong turns and catastrophes of her later life. Was there, Clare asked the sobbing Eartha towards the end, one man she truly loved and could have been happy with? Yes, she replied, Arthur Lowe. For years afterwards, I cherished the image of a passionate affair between the feline, ultra-sexy Eartha and Captain Mainwaring - but alas, it turned out to be a Hollywood studio executive of the same name. Another illusion gone...

Happy Christmas

Something tells me that I'm going to be sucked into the Yuletide maelstrom tomorrow, so I'll take this opportunity to wish all those who visit this blog a very happy Christmas. Thank you for all your interest and contributions and comments - keep 'em coming. It's been a rather good year, blogwise - a theme to which I intend to return before it's quite out... Meanwhile, God rest ye merry, one and all!

The Persistence of Twitter - and Questions about Donkeys

I'm not sure about this - it either demonstrates a heroic dedication to 'citizen journalism', or the peculiar kind of derangement that can grip you if you get involved with Twitter. Imagine if it had been Stephen Fry...
Meanwhile, this bizarre affair continues. Reading the guy's posts, you can see he wants to do some serious reporting about the state of things in Israel/Palestine - but every morning, as soon as he pops up on the Today programme, all they want to talk about is the fllippin' donkeys - how very English. You can hear the poor chap's frustration increasing with every report... But why is a supposedly serious news programme pulling this stunt in the first place, and presenting it as re-enacting a historical event - the journey of Joseph and a pregnant Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem? Most theologians (and all historians) agree that it never happened, but was shoehorned into Luke's gospel to bring the story into line with Jewish prophecy - the 'census' being an ahistorical device to explain the narrative. But even the sceptical Humphrys raises no questions - except about the donkey, of course...

Grappa and Humbugs

Well, I seem to have headed off the impending Christmas flu - a timely shot of grappa in the afternoon got my vital spirits flowing again (at least that's my theory, built on a solid foundation of post hoc ergo propter hoc).
This story did my vital spirits a bit of good this morning too. 'Do as I say, not as I do' has always been the watchword of this humbug-heavy regime - and it's especially good to see that wee Milliband Minor, that tireless promoter of carbon-cutting, planet-saving and all the rest of it, is among the biggest culprits. Humbugs, the lot of them - and the whole 'green agenda' will, I'm pretty sure, be flattened by the approaching juggernaut of the recession. Talking of which, I'm pretty sure I heard Peter Jay on the radio in the small hours explaining that the current definition of a recession - two successive quarters of 'negative growth' - originated in nothing more than a back-of-the-envelope botch, plucked out of the air by one of LBJ's advisers (rather like the government's notorious 'safe drinking' guidelines - though with grappa there are indeed guideliness: One is just right, Two is too many, Three is not enough...)

Solsticial

Sorry about the weekend silence - my home computer had disappeared under a mound of Christmas-related 'stuff' and, in the course of a trying weekend, I was unable to excavate it. Bryan has written eloquently enough about Pre-Christmas Claustrophobia, and the weekend before the Day is always, in my experience, when it hits its frenzied and insane peak. Every year I like Christmas less. Every year - recession or no recession - the consumerist feeding frenzy seems yet more deranged and deranging, leaving not a moment free for quiet or reflection, or even pleasure. By the time the Day arrives, most of us are too exhausted by it all to enjoy much about it (apart from the falling asleep bit) and it takes days to recover - by which time most of us are back at work. Somewhere along the way, a glimmer of truth and hope is provided by the religious observance of Christmas - a light shining in the consumerist darkness...
Of course, half the problem is that this is so absolutely the wrong time of year to be caught up in anything much more demanding than eating and falling asleep. It was the shortest day yesterday, and my vital spirits are at a solsticial low - indeed I suspect I'm nursing a seasonal flu. Never mind eh - here's a lovely, even consoling December poem by Geoffrey Hill:

For rain-sprigged yew trees, blockish as they guard
admonitory sparse berries, atrorubent
stone holt of darkness, no, of claustral light:

for late distortions lodged by first mistakes;
for all departing, as our selves, from time;
for random justice held with things half-known,

with restitution if things come to that.

Walking By on the Other Side?

Clearly Broon hasn't read my epoch-defining post, No We Can't. Ah well, that is forgivable - he's a busy man, what with all the world-saving and stuff - but I'm not sure this nauseating appropriation of the parable of the good Samaritan is in any way forgivable.

Leap Hour?

I don't like the sound of this one bit. All right, I probably won't be around in 600 years to experience the shock of a 'leap hour' - but what on earth are they up to? Can't they leave well alone? It looks to me like a cunning plan to decouple England from unviersal time - which, you'll note, will drift away in the direction of Paris. Wouldn't you know it? And, while we're at it, why should time be measured by oscillating caesium atoms, rather than the revolutions of the earth - that sounds suspiciously French to me too, like the ridiculous metric system...

Global Warming Update

As Britain experiences the coldest early winter weather in 30 years, the stoats are clearly trying to tell us something... I am often asked, How do you tell the difference between a stoat and a weasel? It's easy really - A weasel is weasely recognised, But a stoat is stoatally different. Got that?

Saki

It's the 138th birthday of Hector Hugh Munro, that glorious one-off who wrote under the name of Saki. Here he is at his silkily elegant, clear-eyed, pitiless best.

Anybody Got a Good Title for This One?

I pass on this somewhat perplexing story (from London Metro) simply to beat The News Quiz to it:

'A festive display at a train station has aroused emotion - because it resembles a row of penises. Fabric candles were placed in windows at Settle station, but the 19th-century frames separated the flame, leaving only a phallic-shaped stump. The candle design had been simplified from last year to attract more members, said the North Yorkshire pensioner group that made them.'

One for Charlotte Green, I think...

Save the Parmigiano

In the midst of all this madness, it's good to know that the Italian government - and Italian shoplifters - have got their priorities right. And didn't Samuel Pepys himself, on the outbreak of the Great Fire of London, take care to bury his parmesan cheese in his garden? Wise man...

An NHS Doctor...

Talking of incompetent terrorists, the BBC radio news at 9pm last night began the story of the murderous scumbag who did his best to kill hundreds of innocent people in London and at Glasgow airport with the words, 'An NHS doctor, angry at the suffering caused by the Iraq War...' Unable quite to believe my ears, I wrote it down. By 10 o'clock, happily, it had been changed to something that more nearly reflected the truth.

No We Can't

What to do, oh what to do?
Well actually we haven't a clue...
It's becoming increasingly obvious that we live in an age of incompetence, where most people most of the time haven't a clue what they're doing. A glance at the headlines tells the story, or some of it - from the calamitous stupidity of the bankers and the total failure of the regulatory bodies to the state of childcare and education, law and order, public transport, government IT systems, casual 'losing' of data - it goes all the way down to the slack-jawed knuckle-walkers on every retail counter and at the end of every phone line... Why, even our homegrown terrorists are incompetent (thankfully) and our gangsters can't manage a shooting without taking out bystanders.
What is wrong with us? Various factors are at work, obviously, one of the main ones being the triumph of process over outcome - i.e. a fixation on how the job is done, while ignoring what it's supposed to do (this is of course encouraged on a grand scale by the pseudo-science of 'management' and by a culture of box-ticking). I think there might be a larger movement, too, a kind of evolution by atrophy. Perhaps when the going gets so ridiculously good as it has been for the developed world this past half century, skills and common sense wither away, as there is no pressing need for them - whatever we do, however stupidly we behave, we'll be all right. Well, that could soon be a thing of the past - as the recession bites, we might rediscover some basics, some of the solid realities of life that we have complacently shed along the way. We'll see...
Meanwhile, all together now (to the tune of Age of Aquarius) -
This is the dawning of the
Age of Incompetence...
Except it isn't - it's more like high noon.

In A Nutshell...

They gave their money to Bernie,
And Bernie Madoff with it.

(Sorry - work-whelmed again at NigeCorp...)

The Lesson of the Rock Rat Kebab

I suppose an intermittent running theme of this blog is that the natural world is richer, stranger and more various than we know, or can ever know - but discovering a thousand new species (excluding the smaller invertebrates) in one small corner of the planet is pretty remarkable. There seem to be many such parts of the world which, as soon as a taxonomic eye is trained on them, start giving forth an abundance of hitherto unknown species. In what sense can science possibly claim to have an idea of how many species there are, and of how many are becoming or have become extinct? It's a distinctly anthropocentric business (what else could it be?) and surely bears little relation to the natural world as it is, in all its endless variety and abundance. In this latest story, I particularly like the rock rat thought to have been extinct for 11 million years, but well known to the locals as a delicacy to roast on a stick.

A Level Playing Field?

I saw a poster yesterday for ITV's coverage of the FA Cup. I think it deserves some kind of prize for fatuous would-be inspirational drivel. 'The FA Cup,' it thundered. 'Where All Men Are Equal.' Ah right, so that's why cup teams are open to all and chosen at random, and why every match ends in a draw. Let's all take our soccer togs along to Wembley and join in.

Strictly Predictable

I know what you're thinking - How come all three semifinalists on Strictly Come Dancing got through to the final? No dance-off, no elimination, just an emotion-packed 'All shall be winners' moment... Well, the reason was an entirely predictable outcome of a three-cornered semifinal - two couples tied, with a lead over the third that couldn't be overcome even by a 100 percent audience vote in favour of the third couple. Like so much else in life (credit crunch, financial meltdown, death, Brown's madness) - entirely predictable, yet no one saw it coming. Least of all the fabulously inept BBC, who must have known well before the announcement, but, left with five minutes and more to fill after the end of the programme, couldn't think of anything smarter to do than show the tiresome, self-contratulatory trails for its Christmas ouptut again, and again, and again, until it was like being turned on a spit in some exquisitely refined version of TV hell. It wasn't as if those trailers hadn't already been done to death and beyond. A few minutes with the potter's wheel would have seemed like bliss indeed...
Anyway, this cold, dank and foggy morning, just 20 yards or so along my road, I came eye to eye with a male blackcap (as in the picture) on an overhanging apple branch. It's always a thrill to see these quietly handsome birds, especially in winter. When I was a boy, they would very rarely overwinter, but now they stay in considerable numbers, adding a little extra dash of beauty to the winter scene. Global warming, they say - however perishing cold the winters get... Brrr.

Don't Tell Cheeta

I hope news of this finding (dubious though it may be) doesn't reach Cheeta. As we learn from his utterly wonderful memoir, Me Cheeta, Hollywood's premier primate is touchingly convinced that mankind is on a mission to rescue the world's animals from the horrors and mortal perils of the wild and rehabilitate them into the safe and glorious human world. They can even benefit from the humans' great ongoing project, the War on Death - Cheets certainly seems to have done so, having outlived all other chimps by several decades.
I can't recommend Me Cheeta highly enough - it's the truest, funniest, most scabrously filthy Hollywoood memoir ever penned, a true ape's-eye view of the human monkeyhouse. And it is at times very moving. Cheeta's total, unquestioning love for Johnny Weissmuller permeates the whole book, and the scene of his final, unexpected reunion with the wreck that was once the most beautiful man in the world is almost unbearably moving. Put it on your Christmas list!

The Trouble With Democracy...

is that voters have a nasty habit of voting the wrong way. The Irish did it with the Lisbon 'Treaty", so the EU's going to make them vote again - and get it right this time. It's a move that, with any luck, will backfire spectacularly, such is the unpopularity of the current premier Brian Cowan, a man you'd hesitate to let into your house to fix the boiler (I'll spare you an image link, but he looks much like a side of condemned bacon). And then the good people of Sark went and voted in a way the Barclay brothers didn't like, so they're in a big huff and it looks as if they're going to close down all their businesses in Sark (i.e. Sark). I knew it was madness to break with the feudal tradition and make this rash experiment in democracy...

Another Spreader of Happiness

Another notable English happiness-spreader died on this day in 1996 - Willie Rushton. He was one of those people who wear their talents - of which he had plenty, as his Wikipedia entry makes clear - lightly, and scatter them around prodigally, none too fussy about what they do with them (note the reference to Rushton's being a guest on 'countless TV shows of varying quality'). However, his work (it hardly seems a fitting word) on I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue lifted that show to heights of comic inspiration it might not have achieved without him in the line-up, and he has, rightly, never been replaced. Rushton also drew the superb illustrations for Auberon Waugh's Diary, the two published volumes of which amount to a masterpiece of sustained satirical comedy. So, in the end, he brought much solid and enduring mirth into the world - and anyone who does that deserves all the tributes going.

Penelope Fitzgerald

Recently, belatedly, I've been discovering the late novels of Penelope Fitzgerald - and dang they're good, as many of you will already know. Having read the last, The Blue Flower - an astonishing, haunting piece of work, quite unlike any other novel I've read - I moved on to the penultimate, The Gate Of Angels, which I finished last night. Again it seems sui generis - and again it is wonderfully short, with not a word wasted, and seems to live entirely in its time and place (in this case, Cambridge in 1912). It is also managed with wonderful technical aplomb, all the various strands of the story coming together in a final section that is vivid, exciting, moving and very very funny, and which finally accelerates to a quite breathtaking finish. What a read! I noticed on the cover that The Gate Of Angels was nominated for the Booker in 1990. So what won? A.S. Byatt's Possession. Hmm... Well of course it won - so much more Bookerabile (though Fitzgerald did win once, with Offshore) - but, as between Possession and The Gate Of Angels, I know which I'd sooner read, and reread...

A Greek Lesson

I hope the government and all those concerned with the impending horror of the 2012 London Olympiad have taken note that a principal cause of Greece's descent into bankruptcy and, now, widespread rioting was the spending of billions on a prestige project with no intrinsic or lasting value - i.e. the 2004 Athens Olympics. It's not too late to hand it all back to China - or maybe North Korea, they could put on a good show...

Death Again

Here we go again - death's back, and causing an almighty fuss in some quarters. An obscure satellite pay channel no one had heard of screens what sounds like quite an interesting (in a grim kind of way) documentary about an 'assisted suicide' which happens to show the 'moment of death' - and all hell breaks loose. Some object that this glamorises euthanasia, and there might be something in that (though, without the row, no one would have seen the film), but that doesn't really epxlain the heat being generated. It would seem the 'moment of death' really is the ultimate taboo - a taboo endorsed and entrenched by standard hospital practice, which does its best to bar family from the deathbed. If you have the misfortune to die in hospital, you'll be in the company of a nurse you don't know who'll be addressing you by your Christian name (or someone else's) - great! Once you're safely dead, your family will be telephoned and told you're getting worse and they'd better come in...
So this strange taboo endures. Why? Because it is intensely private? So it is, but so is childbirth, which is routinely shown in all its gory glory even on daytime TV. So is sexual intercourse, which Channel 4 at least has no qualms about showing in lingering detail. So is invasive surgery, so is colonic irrigation - but let's not go there... What is it about 'the moment of death' that gives it such a powerful taboo status? Fifty years ago, it wouldn't have been shown on TV of course - any more than sex or childbirth would - but it was not in itself taboo, and most people expected at some point in their lives to be at the deathbed watching a loved one die. Now you can get through a life, and lose many loved ones, without once seeing death happening. And it seems that many of us (or them out there) want to keep it that way. Why?

A Musical Thought

Listening to Schubert (again) last night, it occurred to me that each generation - using the term very flexibly - has one great musical figure who seems to be THE composer, the nonpareil, the embodiment of ultimate musicality. When I was first finding out about music, this figure, glowering over the musical landscape, was undoubtedly Beethoven, who seemed impregnably ensconced at the musical summit. Then it seemed that his star faded slightly - enough for Mozart to take over the role of supreme musical genius (this might have had something to do with the theatrical nonsense of Amadeus - but was well merited). Now it's changed again and THE composer for our times seems to be Bach. Why is it, I wonder, that these changes occur - and does Bach's enthronement say something about our times? If so, it would seem to be something out of kilter with our supposed secularism, since Bach's music is surely about God - isn't it? And after Bach, who will be next?

Postgate and Grossmith, Spreading Happiness

Sad news today - the death of the great (and happily long-lived) Oliver Postgate, about whom I' ve posted before. He was surely one of the great creative forces in postwar England, his work (especially in collaboration with Peter Firmin) spreading innocent happiness and good cheer of a peculiarly English kind - as it will continue to do long after he is gone. Creations like Bagpuss, the Clangers and Noggin the Nog are true classics, and if Postgate hadn't worked in the doubly despised field of (a) television and (b) what's worse, children's television, he would surely have been more highly regarded and more widely honoured.
Today is also the birthday of George Grossmith (1847), co-creator of another enduring, happiness-spreading English classic - The Diary of a Nobody. Sadly, the Diary - available here in a delightful weblog version - is in hiatus till later in the month, while the Pooters wrestle with the Lupin problem...

A Fish Sorely Misused

Yesterday I saw one of these. At first I took it for some kind of car thing (I don't understand cars), but 'Darwin' seemed an unlikely indicator of superior speed and sexiness. It was a while (the car was parked) before I twigged - it is, literally, a badge of faith, the Darwinist version of those slightly queasy-making fish badges some evangelical Christians put on their cars. Since when was Darwinism - or any other scientific theory - a faith to live by, like any other, like Christianity? I suppose the answer is, since militant atheists contrived to polarise the whole Science-Faith issue (if it really is an issue) into an increasingly strident, stupid and irrelevant shouting match between narrowly literal Creationists and closed-minded Darwinists.
And then, by way of further proof of what has happened, there's this...
It really does seem increasingly irrelevant, all this - a self-gratifying diversion for those who flatter themselves that they're the thinking classes - while the zeitgeist, shaped by recession, hard times and a growing sense of threat, is already, I suspect, beginning to turn to, rather than away from, Christianity. But that's a big subject for a less work-whelmed day...

Birthday Boy(s)

It's my birthday today - me and old Tom Waits: same day, same year, somewhat divergent destinies... As is now traditional, I am spending the day slogging away at NigeCorp - with too few of my fellow toilers to organise an oxroast - but I don't complain. It's a beautiful crisp morning - blue skies and sparkling frost; I'll be taking a brisk walk at lunchtime - and I'll be celebrating this evening en famille. Meanwhile the gifts, cards and greetings roll in - though yet again that bastard Tom's forgotten. Typical...

Big O RIP

Twenty years ago today, Roy Orbison died - I remember the jolt of seeing the news on a placard. Orbison truly was (in Cohen's phrase) 'born with the gift of a golden voice', one of extraordinary range and versatility and with a unique sweetness of tone. Elvis called him 'the greatest singer I've ever heard', and it would be fair to include him among the greatest of the century (in popular music). Here's a spine-tingling reminder...
And here's an intriguing clip in which a shadeless Roy talks boots - hope you're watching, Bryan...

Ghost Libraries

As a one-time librarian, I was tickled by this tale of municipal skulduggery. Note the use of that unlovely phrase 'cultural information hub' - all too descriptive of the modern public library. The 'showpiece' central library of the borough where I live seems now to consist of vast open spaces with big coloured blocks bearing vague words, where once bookshelves used to be. Only the reference library survives - thank heavens - in a recognisably library-like form, with quantities of actual books on actual shelves. I was a reference librarian myself, in another life, and found it a thoroughly agreeable occupation, not least because most library users hadn't worked out we were there, lurking inaccesibly at the top of a rather labyrinthine Victorian building. As a result I was free to pursue my other interests and occupations largely undisturbed. Happy days...

Tempora mutantur

This is sad news, if hardly unexpected. As I remarked at the time, the Great Man seemed unhappy last year, even showing signs of taking the whole thing seriously - so clearly it was time to move on. Eurovision will be very different with the twinkly, giggly, hyperfluent Norton providing the commentary. Wogan's comments were always few and far between, perfectly timed to make the silences between them eloquent - hard to see Norton managing that trick. His turns of phrase were pleasingly archaic (not, needless to say, in the arch, self-advertising Russell Brand way) and he made telling use of understatement - again not Norton's forte. Ah well, times change - and Royaume Unie seems to have been suckered into trying to win next time, with a Lloyd-Webber-led Surge. It won't work - and watching the proceedings will, I fear, no longer have its obscure but potent charm.

Celebrations

As the annual work tsunami engulfs NigeCorp - hence my recent sparse blogging - it is of course time for the Office Party. It was last night. The Office Party, sadly, is never in keeping with the grand tradition of NigeCorp celebrations - oxroast, choral singing, orations, downing of bumpers of claret, no heeltaps - but this year the arrangements had apparently been hijacked by the provisional wing of GirlieCorp. As a result, we found ourselves descending ankle-breaking steps into a basement bar that my old friend Cheever pithily described as 'the inside of the White Rabbit's womb'. 'Yes,' I concurred, surveying the decor, 'with a nasty case of fibroids.' All done in shades of beige and cream, with worryingly bedlike, wipe-clean seating and bizarre gestures at Christmas decoration, it looked like a cut-price Winter Wonderland crossed with a swingers' club. And the 'music' - all drum machine, thumping bass and moaning - fitted perfectly, while inedible canapés and sickly, mud-brown cocktails completed the picture. I managed to procure wine (in special easy-spill glasses) but did not, needless to say, stay long. Long enough, though, to feel a little frail this morning - mostly, I think, from lack of food.
Never mind, here are two causes for celebration - Jonathan the tortoise, bless him - and the dear old EU. Having announced that it would 'lead the world' in the matter of carbon-cutting, it has proceeded to lead the world in failing to reach an agreement. I am sure this is a lead the world will indeed follow, if only because, once the thrill of setting impossible targets has faded, it will realise it actually has no choice.

Banks in Bad Company

A headline on the BBC news caught my ear this morning. Proposed legislation in today's Queen's Speech will be 'targeting banks, binge drinkers and benefit cheats'. Who would have thought, just a year ago, that bankers would find themselves rubbing shoulders with boozers and fraudsters as government 'targets' - the whirligig of time... But the most worrying target has been kept half-hidden - once again it's the recalcitrant citizenry, guilty until proved innocent. Police powers to stop, without any pretext, anyone who has 'entered the country' and demand proof of their identity is as unmistakable a step towards a police state as there could be. I hope it is blown out of the water at the first opportunity. There's a good piece on the ID card business in Standpoint, which gives reason to hope that the whole dubiously legal edifice could yet be brought crashing down. Let's hope so.

Obama-Clinton Coe-Ovett

Watching Barack Obama introducing his 'dear friend' Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State took me back to that memorable scene at the 1980 Olympics when Steve Ovett, victorious in the 800 metres, held out his hand to Sebastian Coe. Clive James, if memory serves, described Coe's reaction to having to shake that hand as being like a man who's been asked if he'd mind holding this dog turd for a minute. Little Lord Coe, that charming man and true Corinthian, is now of course presiding over the mounting horror that is the London 2012 Olympiad.

News from Nowhere

Why is this preposterous fantasy being indulged? Ah I know - because we're still at the feelgood, aspirational stage and politicians like that. When, in a few years, fuel bills are soaring by 25 per cent and more, the lights are going out, industries are closing down, and great tracts of the country have been given over to useless wind turbines (doubly useless because by then there'll be no capacity to back them up), reality might finally bite - and people might finally get very angry at having been sold such delusional nonsense. All these absurd, wholly unworkable projections should be scrapped forthwith, Lord Turner should be taken to a discreet clinic, and we should get down to building more nuclear - and coal-fired (recognising that carbon capture is another delusion) - power stations. There is, as someone used to say, no alternative.

Baseline TV

Call it shameless plagiarism if you like - I prefer to think of it as (hem hem) creatively developing a good idea. The good idea is Bryan's Baseline Movie and Baseline Book - and my question is: What about your Baseline TV programme? For me (and Bryan I suspect) it's Frasier every time - when nothing will quite do, nothing else will do. Quite apart from being the greatest sitcom ever made, it manages to be at once smart and sharp and cosy and comforting - exactly what one needs for a Baseline TV programme. But there must be others? Over to you...

The Hallelujah Factor

I'm still reeling from the news that the X Factor Christmas single is going to be Hallelujah. It seems that Leonard Cohen's strange and beautiful song, which he spent a year wrestling with and was never entirely sure about, has - thanks to over-exposure and endless cover versions - not only entered the mainstream (making Simon Cowell yet more money along the way) but become all-purpose musical shorthand for any kind of vague spiritual yearning. It's the melody that does it - the fourth, the fith, the minor fall. If only Len had stayed within his usual, shall was say, limited melodic horizons, the song would have been safe - but alas it seems he's inadvertently gifed the world with... a new Imagine, to be lazily reached for every time a little effort-free, content-free spiritual uplift seems called for . Well, I suppose there's some consolation in the fact that it's an infinitely better song than Imagine - and presumably, if Len's on any kind of royalties deal, his coffers will be swelling nicely and he need never tour again. Hallelujah!

Hell and High Water

I feel as if I ought to be saying something about the Damian Green affair - Bryan has - but, as so often these days, I'm so comprehensively aghast that I can barely articulate anything. Indeed my reaction to most of what this government is doing could best be summed up not in words, but in a sound - in that spontaneous gasping whoosh of incredulity that erupted in the Commons when Darling unveiled the full depth of the debt abyss he was digging for future generations. It's as if Brown now has a tactic of unleashing policies so jaw-droppingly preposterous and pursuing actions so breath-takingly deplorable that opponents - inded any sane person looking on - are struck dumb with appalled incredulity. With Mandelson and Campbell egging him on, he seems to be acting like a madman, willing to do anything to cling on to power. One can only hope that, being madness, it will prove self-destructive in the end - but, when power is finally prised from his tenacious grip, we taxpayers, God help us, will be left to pay the bills after he's trashed the place.
Never mind - the good news is that the lovely picture blog Venice Daily Photo is up and running again, after a six-month absence in Rome - and it's acqua alta time. And The Onion has yet more sound evidence of the beneficial effects of booze. (While you're there, check out the Magritte story too...)

Back to Brunel

This is an interesting project (go to White on Brunel, under Projects, for the slideshow)...
There's an extraordinary beauty about the images produced by these slow chemical techniques, I think - a depth and softness, a richness of tone that's quite lost in slicker, sharper modern photography. And all achieved in what is misleadingly called 'black and white'. These pictures feel as if they are indeed 'light drawings', not instant impressions. They are products of time, through which ghostly people stroll, swans swim and trains pass, and they perfectly reflect the monumentality of Brunel's great structures. It seems to me rather wonderful that someone should revive this art, and put it to such good use.

Randy Again

Randy Newman - no stranger to this blog - is 65 today. Another of those birthdays that make you suddenly feel that bit older yourself... Here he is in his younger days, singing one of his most beautiful songs. Enjoy...

Blake's Unhappy Birth Day

William Blake was born on this day in 1757. Like Samuel Beckett, he seems to remember and rue the occasion...
Here's an anecdote about him by Samuel Palmer. Blake would frequently come down to Shoreham to visit 'The Ancients', his young devotees, passing the time there in walking, talking, writing, praying and Bible reading. His favourite reading was the parable of the prodigal son, but when he reached the words 'But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion...', Blake would invariably break down in tears, unable to go on. For some reason, this story lingers in my memory.

A Crisis In Mycology (Warning: Contains astoundingly bad joke)

Apparently there's a shortage of mycologists developing in this country, as the fungi experts are mostly nearing retirement age, and young scientists prefer more glamorous fields (I can't think why - after all, isn't a mycologist a fungi to be around?). Beatrix Potter was also an accomplished mycologist (that's one of her illustrations, of course), but her social standing - and sex - meant she could never take it up professionally. In her case, mycology's loss was art and literature's gain.

Conversation

That supersmooth purveyor of the higher nonsense Alain de Botton has been at it again. Clearly he's all for the art of conversation, is Botton, and happy to help it along with a carefully chosen 'menu' of topics. There's a thought to chill the blood. It's hard to imagine anything much more dispiriting than being at a dinner party with Botton and his menu cards - unless, of course, it was dinner with the French windbag Theodore Zeldin, who seems to have given Botton his bright idea in the first place. 'It's almost impossibe to be bored when people tell you about what they are scared of or whom they desire,' declares Botton. He may well be right - put perfectly possible to be repelled, embarrassed and suddenly mindful of an urgent appointment elsewhere.
Here are all the conversational menu cards anyone needs:
The Weather.
What Do You Do Then?
House Prices.
Schools (if age-appropriate).
Something on Telly.
Holidays/Christmas.
The Food (appreciative noises only).
Drink hard enough and these will get you through any dinner party.

Thanksgiving

There cannot be much wrong, I reckon, with a country whose defining national celebration is not some grand affirmation of its own glory but a festival of Thanksgiving (which falls, of course, today). We humans are seldom better employed than in the exercise of thankfulness and its close attendant, mindfulness - which I see as something akin to paying attention. Thankfulness requires no external agent to be thankful to - it is simply a moving outside of oneself, a shift of perspective away from very present woes and towards the good that is to be found if looked for, while mindfulness similarly takes us outside ourselves and makes us aware of others - as, in secular terms, individuals wth their own rights and projects, or, in religious terms, as fellow creatures with God in them. In these days of arid self-absorption, of unmindful self-gratification and its discontents, we need more than ever to give thanks.
'In the desert of the heart
Let the healing fountain start.
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.'

Argos!

I' ve just been to Argos (I know - the dazzling glamour of my life - it's almost too much...). It was the second time in the past few weeks that I've been obliged to shop there, and I approached the place with extreme reluctance. On my first visit I had been in and out in under five minutes, with barely any queuing, no queries, no delays. Naturally I assumed this was a freakish bit of good luck - I have memories of shopping at Argos being much like visiting a Soviet-era supermarket. But no - this second time I was in and out of Argos even more smoothly and in even less time. Suddenly Argos is my kind of shopping - swift, efficient, minimal human contact, the whole thing stripped down to the essentials. It will never replace online shopping in my affections - well, online shopping on eBay, Amazon, AbeBooks and a few other favourites - but if shop one must in the nonvirtual world, Argos is the place to go. Good Lord, I never thought I'd say that...

A Doozy

I pass this story on simply in the interests of enhancing the gaiety of nations. Perfect in every detail, it made me laugh quite immoderately on a dank grey morning - and of course put me in mind of that classic scene in Withnail and I when W attempts to bypass a urine test.

No Comment

These are hard times for those of us who might like to comment on the passing scene from time to time. Stories like this simply render all comment superfluous. We retire dumbfounded, our jaws on our chests. First Darling, now Harman - how much more can we take of this?

Peacocks and Chuggers

Being the only alfresco sandwich-eater braving the cold in a sheltered corner of Holland Park this afternoon, I was hardly surprised to find myself besieged by importunate pigeons and grey 'squirrels' - but to be harassed by a peacock was more of a novelty. Fixing me meaningly with his bright eye, the brute was clearly on the point of snatching my sandwich from my hand when I saw him off - though not very far off; he continued to loiter with intent in the shrubbery. Peacocks may be beautiful birds - and a close-up look is always an aesthetic pleasure - but morally they are every bit as degenerate as the rest of the feloniously inclined fauna.
Returning via the high street, I encountered, inevitably, their human equivalent - the little legion of 'chuggers' (charity muggers) who home in on the unwary passerby with a laser smile and a merry 'How are you today?' At least I imagine that's what they say. Happily I have perfected a Look that freezes the words on their lips and leaves them in no doubt that to proceed further would be to risk something far worse... Happily there are signs that something might be done to clear the street of these grinning menaces. It would be a start.

A Thought on the Crisis

What's to say that hasn't been said (or rather not said) in the Other Place? All I will note is that throughout this crisis, Broon has been flashing that terrifying smile of his and giving the impression of being on some poweful euphoriant drug. When the going was good, he sported, equally incongruously, that jowly, pouchy scowl of his at all times and never cracked a smile. Unfortunately he only has these two expressions at his disposal, and seems incapable of modifying either of them - unlike the great snake oil salesman, his predecessor, who could fake a range of finely nuanced expression for any occasion. The effect of Broon's bipolar face is to suggest a drastic disconnection from what is actually going on. He should be feeling our pain, shouldn't he, not grinning away as if everything's fine and dandy? A man who is actually made happy by crisis has a very strange idea of pleasure. It is another aspect of his not-quite-human quality - the quality that, I have always maintained, makes him ultimately unelectable.

Joplin and Busoni

Here, belatedly, is a link to birthday boy Scott Joplin, showing how it's done. And here's a link to the great Ferrucio Busoni playing Chopin. I wish there were more of these piano roll recordings - Busoni's and others - online.

Getting To Grips With Spinoza?

Well I never - it's Spinoza's birthday (born 1632) - just as I'm finally beginning to get some kind of grip on his famously impenetrable system. What grip I have is entirely due to this brilliant book, which I am reading with an increasing sense of having my eyes opened to something very big, wonderful and - yes - life-enhancing. I recommend Betraying Spinoza to all who might be interested - a true guide for the perplexed.
And it's also the birthday of one of my enduring literary heroes, Laurence Sterne - and of Scott Joplin. Which calls for a rag, if only I had the technology (here at NigeCorp) to link to one...
Sagittarians all, of course, like me.

Recycling, Tasers

So the inevitable is happening to the great recycling scam as it collapses under the weight of its own absurdities and contradictions. What happens now? Since 'recycling' (i.e. shipping to the third world) targets are set by the European Commission, they have to be met. But they can't be met. So... Exactly the same applies to the enthusiastically ramped-up targets for renewable energy and CO2 reductions. They can't be met. They must be met. So...? Perhaps future governments might actually think before signing up to these absurdities - but I rather doubt it. It never seems to work that way...
Meanwhile, tasers are to be issued to all police forces. Am I right to be feeling nervous?

Listmania again

How about this for a list? Pretty much as you'd expect from les Cahiers, I guess - but Freaks at no 22 seems a tad de trop...

Reptiles - The New Dogs

Can this really be true? As it's the British Federation of Herpetologists making the calculations (no doubt on the back of a torpid iguana), they're likely to be on the generous side - but the trend is probably real enough. I suspect that growth in reptile ownership (like the ownership of certain canine fighting machines) follows in line with growth in what might loosely be called the underclass or welfariat. The growth graph would follow growth in obestiy and mirror decline in physical activity. Reptiles, spending so much of their time in a condition of torpor, are the perfect, undemanding couch potato pets. They require no more than the kind of minimal attention even the most dedicated career layabout might manage - thawing out a reptile every few days, lobbing the odd locust... If we are indeed a nation of reptile owners, it is, I fear, another index of our national decline. A nation of dog owners is a sturdy, active, mobile nation, its emotional needs taken care of and social interaction guaranteed (the English being far too reserved to get emotionally involved with non-canines, and unable to talk to each other without a dog on a lead). A nation of reptile owners, on the other hand, is a craven, immobile, atomised and emotionally incontinent society. Is this what we've come to?

Billy Milton

Here's something to cheer us all up on a Saturday morning - enjoy. Billy Milton - the toast of Paris in the Thirties - died on this day in 1989.

Sparrows

Time to catch up on yesterday's big story - the sorry plight of the house sparrow, driven out of our gardens by decking mania, tree felling, paving, planting of such exotica as the accursed cupressus leylandii, and altogether doing far too much weeding, cutting back and sprucing up (though there's nothing wrong with spruce). The lazy gardener is now the hero of the hour - which is fine by me, as my own approach is precisely that: minimal weeding, cutting back and pruning, maximum shrubby cover and few unfriendly exotics. And of course absolutely no decking or paving where plant cover should be. The local sparrows, duly grateful, are currently the most numerous visitors to my bird feeder, and I'm very glad to see them.
But wait a minute, the more Oddistic among you, will be saying - that picture isn't a house sparrow (passer domesticus), it's a tree sparrow (passer montanus). Correct - it is - and happily I have a colony of these delightful little birds close to where I live. The unfortunate tree sparrow has suffered more than its relative in recent years, declining by 50 per cent. In fact it is now on the red list of endangered species. Let's hope the house sparrow doesn't go the same way...

The Brightest Star

Well it looks as if the much-vaunted international space station has been pretty much a ten-year waste of time. I suppose this is kind of sad, though I've never been one whose blood was much stirred by space exploration. But what I find really sad is that this man-made object is now the brightest star in the sky. This strikes me as not only sad but fundamentally wrong - I'd really rather it wasn't there at all. .

Alistair Cooke, 100

It's the centenary of the birth of Alistair Cooke, an occasion that is being marked with due ceremony by the BBC - despite the fact that for most of his broadcasting career the BBC was trying to get rid of him. It's a BBC tradition - the high-ups always hate and resent their best talent, usually because it tends not to sit easily with the prevailing leftist-PC ethos. Every now and then some BBC aparatchik would be sent over to New York to try to dislodge Cooke and put an end to Letter From America, a programme the go-ahead BBC regarded as hopelessly dated. Said aparatchik would invariably return scratching his head, rubbing his chin and wondering what happened - and the great man, having bamboozled and charmed the young whippersnapper from here to eternity, would carry on as before.
He was, as the BBC - now he is safely dead - acknowledges, a very great radio broadcaster, who turned the quarter-hour talk into a form of high (but entirely effortless and unforced) art. Ars celare artem and all that - his talks seemed quite astonishingly casual at the time he started them, as hearing anyone else's radio talks from the time confirms. And he kept going, far, far beyond the normal career span of a broadcaser, let alone a programme. He was there for 9/11 and rose to that terrible occasion as well as anyone at the time. There will, of course, never be another Alistair Cooke, and the art which he perfected, the short talk, is barely clinging to life - a great shame, as it has endless possibilities in the right hands. Clive James, for example, can do it - here's his latest. Enjoy.

A Corinthian

Only one issue is occupying the minds of the nation this morning - the voluntary departure of John Sergeant from Strictly Come Dancing. Even the newly returned Bryan has fleetingly addressed it. He doesn't know what it means, he says. Well, here's the meaning I take from it, and it's a surprisingly heartening one. I reckon Sergeant's popularity with the viewing public showed that such traditional attributes of the English gentleman as modesty, delf-deprecating humour and a refusal to take non-serious things seriously are still highly valued. Sergeant had all these qualities in spades, plus an almost unEnglish quantity of sheer charm - the nation was won over, but, as Sergeant saw, the joke was wearing thin by the last round, and it was going to turn nasty. The game had ceased to be fun. Sergeant, in the true Corninthian spirit, withdrew with good grace, realising that if a game is no longer fun and ugly tendencies are rearing up, it's not worth playing. John Sergeant, Corinthian - nothing in the contest became him like the leaving of it.

Café Royal and Olympics

Sad news about the Café Royal, especially as London is already too full of ludicrously overpriced hotels. The Café Royal isn't what it was in its glory days, when Oscar held court with Max and Aubrey and the rest, and Ronald Firbank nervously pushed a single pea around his plate. But the decor is still something to see...
This move is of course, like so much else in London - for example, clearing rough sleepers from the streets (this is already under way) - geared to the coming of the Olympic horror in 2012. On this subject, Iain Sinclair says it all, and more. Lord how I love Iain Sinclair - I genuinely found London Orbital a book so riveting and fascinating I didn't want it to end. I suspect that's probably just me though - you have to have done a lot of a particular kind of walking....

Blythburgh

In work-engulfed times like these, the mind (well, mine anyway) seeks escape and solace by wandering off to revisit happier times and pleasanter scenes, taking a few moments' mental stroll in well loved country or loitering briefly in, say, a fondly remembered church. Also at such times, the hand (my hand anyway) reaches out to the bookshelf to see what it might find. Last night I took down Peter Porter''s classic collection The Cost of Seriousness, opened it and found this poem, which, for me, did the double, offering what might be called the consolations of poetry - something to do with emotion (here, as throughout the collection, grief) caught and given shape in a grid of formal, controlled language - while taking me back to a great church that, once seen, is truly never forgotten. There's an unusually good account of its wonders here.

Engulfed

Sorry everybody - engulfed in a NigeCorp work tsunami again, and I fear there's more to come. Oh to escape the Corp's clutches and have a life... But I need the money. Which puts me in mind of this poem by John Davidson, an all but forgotten precursor of modernism. Eliot thought highly of him. Thirty Bob A Week, adjusted for inflation, seems an apt tract for the times about to come, just as this was for the times just gone. And we fall face forward fighting on the deck...

The Art of Conversation

Ah yes, the art of conversation - there's a new book about it, reviewed here. It sounds quite good. Are we conversing less, or just differently? We on the blogosphere could be said to be having one mighty conversation,could we not, on a scale undreamt of in pre-internet times - even if it isn't face to face, even if we talk through personas and noms be blogue. The question 'Is the art of conversation dying?' more or less answers itself; if you believe there is/was such a thing, chances are you'll think it isn't what it was. When Wilde and Shaw and Whistler were sparkling away in the salons of London, there were probably many grumbling that their kind of talk had killed the art of conversation. As a man of few (spoken) words, I'm with Randall Jarrell here: 'People say conversation is a lost art: how often I have wished it were.'
The picture above is there simply because I like it. It's by Andy Pankhurst, a ridiculously young and talented painter, who has an exhibition coming up at Browse & Darby. I hope I get to see it...

Homo Erectus Morphs Again

Several times a year, it seems, a fragment of fossilised bone turns up that overthrows what scientists thought they knew about our hominid ancestors (or, come to that, about the dinosaurs). This doesn't, of course, stop them asserting the radically revised picture with all the certainty they attached to the previous one - a certainty that properly belongs to a version of truth a tad more, shall we say, solidly based and likely to last. This time it's Homo Erectus, who is suddenly reshaped as a wide-hipped bighead - more work for the illustrators, who will have to update such gracile images as the one that adorns this post. Fans of the Kinkster, of course, already know all we need to know about Homo Erectus. (I don't recommend it as a ringtone though...)

Clough (A Day Late)

I've just realised that I missed the anniversary of Arthur Hugh Clough's death - it was yesterday, and he died in 1861, at the age of just 42. Clough is one of the strangest, most fascinating and unclassifiable of the Victorian poets. He seems the least English, the least rooted of them - hardly surprising, as he spent his childhood years in Charleston, South Carolina (though he later attended Rugby and came under the Arnold influence). Clough also seems one of the most proto-modern of the Victorians, endlessly experimenting with metres and voices, and most un-Victorian in the frankness of his disenchanted world view. Here (belatedly) is one of his better known lyrics, taken from the rambling, Venetian-set satire Dipsychus. It seems entirely apt for our times - or rather for the times that have just come skidding to a credit-crunched halt....


As I sat at the café, I said to myself,
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf
They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking
But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking,
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money.

I sit at my table en grand seigneur,
And when I have done, throw a crust to the poor;
Not only the pleasure, one’s self, of good living,
But also the pleasure of now and then giving.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

It was but last winter I came up to town,
But already I’m getting a little renown;
I make new acquaintance where’er I appear;
I am not too shy, and have nothing to fear.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

I drive through the streets, and I care not a d—n;
The people they stare, and they ask who I am;
And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

We stroll to our box and look down on the pit,
And if it weren’t low should be tempted to spit;
We loll and we talk until people look up,
And when it’s half over we go out to sup.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

The best of the tables and the best of the fare—
And as for the others, the devil may care;
It isn’t our fault if they dare not afford
To sup like a prince and be drunk as a lord.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

We sit at our tables and tipple champagne;
Ere one bottle goes, comes another again;
The waiters they skip and they scuttle about,
And the landlord attends us so civilly out.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

It was but last winter I came up to town,
But already I’m getting a little renown;
I get to good houses without much ado,
Am beginning to see the nobility too.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

O dear! what a pity they ever should lose it!
For they are the gentry that know how to use it;
So grand and so graceful, such manners, such dinners,
But yet, after all, it is we are the winners.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

Thus I sat at my table en grand seigneur,
And when I had done threw a crust to the poor;
Not only the pleasure, one’s self, of good eating.
But also the pleasure of now and then treating,
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho
So pleasant it is to have money.

They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
And how one ought never to think of one’s self,
And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking—
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money.

Only In Russia?

It's hard to imagine this happening anywhere else - except Albania perhaps. Or Liverpool of course - they used to have three cathedrals you know...

Weather Notes from the Sick Bay (and Stubble 4)

On this day in 1922 (I remember it well - foggy it was, a right pea-souper), 2LO, the radio station of the British Broadcasting Company, made its first official broadcast on medium wave from Marconi House, launching with the first radio news bulletin. This was read by Director of Programmes Arthur Burrows, who a month later played Father Christmas in the first radio play, and became one of the original 'Uncles' (yes, Uncle Arthur) on Children's Hour. You don't get that kind of multi-tasking versatility in the BBC these days...
Along with the first newscasts came the first weather forecasts, which predicted more of the same, having grasped immediately that this is always the safest way to forecast the weather. (I'm not sure of the figure, but 'much the same as today' has a surprisingly high accuracy rate, not far short of the computer-assisted Met Office's current performance.) The fog persisted - and so, on an epic scale, did the BBC, becoming the vast, monstrous, sclerotic entity that looms over today's broadcasting landscape, and is run by a man with a stubbly face. Would Arthur Burrows have worn stubble? Would Lord Reith? They would not. Nor, come to that, would that fine old-school weatherman Jack Scott, who sadly died yesterday...

Mitch Mitchell, Never Knowingly Underestimated

RIP Mitch Mitchell, a great drummer and part of one of the most extraordinary bands ever formed (though their output was, to be honest, patchy and their peak didn't last long). A tribute read out on the Radio 4 news this morning declared that his contribution to the band 'could not be underestimated'. It's surprising how often this kind of mistake - which gives the opposite meaning of what's intended - occurs, and it's rarely noticed.
I have been kept awake most of the night by a particularly nasty, insidious 'cold', so I might not be inspired to post much today. Go over to Dick's place and enjoy yourselves...

Inner Oddie

My inner Oddie had a bit of a treat just now. Walking in Holland Park (an eddy in the NigeCorp maelstrom having flung me briefly clear), I saw - or mostly heard - a party of foraging Fieldfares, flying noisily from tree to tree. This doesn't often happen in London, so I was quite pathetically excited.

British = Spastic

Offensive language eh? Don't you just love it? Actually I don't like the word British myself - it has a kind of artifical sound and I don't feel anything other than English, but I don't make an issue of it. Note who's at the bottom of this latest Welsh nonsense - that colourful character Ron Davies, whose badger watching and 'moment of madness' on Clapham Common gave us all a good laugh a few years ago. He's still aroud then - you can't keep a good man down...

A New Dawn for Abnormally Curved Bananas?

When weird yachtsman (but he had a good war) Grocer Heath suckered us into signing up to the European project 40-odd years ago, only the most sceptical among us would have guessed just how extensive the reach of 'Europe' would be. In fact few of us realise it now, as our politicians and their media mouthpieces prefer to pass off policies as their own bright ideas rather than what the EU is telling them to do. One small area of the vast ocean of EC regulations has tended to attract unwelcome attention though - the obsessively detailed specifications for fruits and vegetables. So every few years they announce that there's going to be a legislative bonfire and all those silly rules are going up in smoke. Not that they ever existed of course - the regulation on the curvature of bananas (for the benefit of readers from outside the EU, I am not making this up) for example is universally described as an absurd and damaging 'myth', although it's there in black and white, for those who can trawl their way through to regulation 2257/94. It states that bananas must be 'free of abnormal curvature' and at least 5.5in long. That's Europe for you - smoke and mirrors, waste and corruption, and downright lies. No wonder the auditors have refused to sign off the EU's accounts - for the 14th year running.

The Silence of the Nige

Sorry everybody, but I find myself descending - arms flailing, legs kicking, my anguished cries unheard - into a NigeCorp work maelstrom. And work maelstroms don't come much worse that NigeCorp ones, believe me.
I am hoping to communicate tomorrow, but it might be no more than a stream of sadly winking bubbles...

Leo

Time for a picture - and a change of shape. That's a Raphael, from the Raphael rooms in the Vatican, and it shows Pope Leo the Great meeting Attila the Hun outside Rome in 452 and persuading him not to advance and sack the city. Attila withdrew, impressed by - here's the multiple choice bit: either (a) Leo's evident moral stature, or (b) the apparitions of armed men in the sky above Leo, or (c) the large quantity of gold Leo had with him and the fact that Attila's army was overstretched. Anyway, it's Leo's saint's day today.

WWJD

What would Jesus make of these scenes at the Holy Sepulchre Church? What indeed would he make of the very existence of such a building - or of 'Christianity'?

Music Lessons

I'm sure I'm not the only who, reading this depressing story, recalled my own childhood music lessons and marvelled at how times have changed. I was taught piano by a distinguished gent in, I suppose, his 60s, who wore tweed suits and closely resembled the great Ralph Vaughan Williams. A bachelor who had spent most of his life dominated by a formidable mother (who lived into her 90s, on cigarettes and cussedness), he was an excellent teacher and a fine player. Among his eccentricities was to pronounce all Italian words as if they were English - hence acciacatura would be akky-akka-tura... And another of his eccentricities was, at the end of a lesson, to hug me to his tweed-waistcoated paunch for a minute or two, just that, with perhaps the occasional endearment and pat of the head. This never bothered me - coming from a not very tactile family, I found it slightly awkward, but then I found most things awkward at that age. The strange ways of adults were constantly bemusing, and we children just took what came and got on with our lives. As he would hug me in front of my mother, it was clearly all right with her, and I'm quite sure there was nothing actually sexual in it - it was probably no more than an expression of the paternal affection he would have lavished on his own children, had he been allowed to marry and have a family.
Nowadays, of course, the poor soul would be in jail. We live in a society where behaviour is increasingly dominated by the fear of litigation - and by hysterical supersensitivity to potential 'child abuse'. How are today's children going to develop if they are taught to regard any physical contact with an adult as 'wrong', as a sexual threat? The generalised affection and care of the older generation for the younger is already withering away, leaving the young isolated and alienated once they are outside the cocoon of the nuclear family - which is, we are led to believe, where most of the 'child abuse' happens anyway. Hey ho.

Remembrance

Remembrance Sunday, in the 90th anniversary year of the First World War (though the end year is given on most memorials as 1919). As that war passes from living memory - just three veterans alive in the UK now - one of the questions we ask in retrospect is Why did so many Englishmen volunteer to fight? No doubt there were many motives - some higher than others - but I'm sure Edward Thomas spoke for many in this poem, which defines, I think, the noblest and truest form of love of country. He put it more succinctly in a gesture, when someone asked him (while he was on home leave) what he was fighting for. He bent down, picked up a handful of earth, and said, 'For this. Literally for this.'

The BBC Does It Again

Hats off to the BBC's crack team of crisis managers! They've managed to keep the Ross-Brand row in the papers for yet another week, culminating in the jawdroppingly belated broadcast of a botched apology - no doubt the product of many hours of 'meetings' (they're what the BBC does). And then it had to be rewritten.

Astral Weeks!

So there I was, earlier this morning, squinting blearily at an old tape, trying to make out the name I'd scrawled on it. Finally I got it - Astral Weeks. Ah yes, I thought, Astral Weeks, great album, one of the greatest, got it on CD now of course, must throw the tape away... Half an hour later, I check in at the Big House, and what do I find? This, of course. It seems Brit and I have achieved psychic communion...
Actually it's not Van so much as Randy Newman (above) who's on my mind this morning, as I watched him performing a BBC4 session last night. This is one great songwriter, and in an intimate setting like St Luke's (where the session was recorded) with just him and the piano and occasional discreet strings, you realise just how great. And how many stunningly good songs he has in his repertoire, despite his appearance of inveterate laziness and reluctance to release albums. What caps it all though is his between-songs banter, which is simply the best in the business. The session was sheer joy. Anyone in need of a refresher, just buy this.
(He looks alarmingly like Bryan - pre-weight loss Bryan - in that picture, doesn't he? On screen he looked more like a younger David Hockney.)

Irritating Phrases, Anyone?

Basically, with all due respect, at the the end of the day, I personally don't entirely agree with the contents of this fairly unique list (at this moment in time). 'I personally' can function as a minor intensifier, and be practically useful in, for example, distinguising a personal opinion from an official one - it's not rocket science (I personally prefer the phrase 'It's not rocket salad', coined by David Renwick). 'With all due respect' is useful when dealing with people you loathe, in as much as it means the exact opposite. 'Shouldn't of' is just plain wrong, but hardly matters in spoken use (at the end of the day). And so on - I'm sure many of you out there have a few issues with this list - that's what these things are published for (at the end of the day) - and will have suggestions for phrases to add to the list.
Mine would include two that are very popular with politicians and other devotees of the weasel word - 'Going forward' and 'Issues around' . Also, for some reason, the noun 'heads-up' annoys the hell out of me...
Any more for any more?

How To Do - and Not Do - Things

Here's a story to savour. What it boils down to is this: the regulatory body in charge of vetting the security 'industry' couldn't even vet its own employees. With every passing day, the world moves farther beyond parody. But never mind. 'We will continue to contribute to public protection through regulation,' declares one Ruth Henig. That's all right then...
For an example of a nation that works, we need to look further afield - to Bhutan. Here's a country that knows how to do things. A new democracy with a popular monarchy, its laudable, if ill-named, policy of Gross National Happiness (GNH) is firmly based on preserving the traditional ways. The Bhutanese have the sense to rely on 'enlightened astologers' rather than the likes of the Security Industry Authority. Very wise.

The Horror, The Horror

Here's one to chill the blood. This ID business has to be stopped. It's preposterously expensive, it will do nothing but make life more unpleasant and inconvenient than it already is for the law-abiding, it will be utterly insecure, and it will hugely expand state surveillance while diminishing what remains of our individual liberties. In short, I'm agin it, and sincerely hope that, when Broon is finally dislodged, an incoming government scraps the whole thing as one of its first acts.

Another One Gone

Another of the very last dies - and a pretty lucky one too. To be discharged on grounds of ill health in 1941 and live to 108 is not bad going. I hope by 'moderate' drinking he meant an Oz-scale intake.

Westfield and the Pits

It didn't take long for the Westfield megamall to show its true colours. Retail dress code trumps remembrance of the nation's war dead any day. And, sure enough, the retailers who were suckered into setting up store there are already being shafted. Makes you feel all warm inside doesn't it?
That's the trouble with secular cathedrals - the values they're built on leave something to be desired...

Meanwhile...

Here's Charles Pooter of Diary Of A Nobody fame - a bit of a hero and role model of mine - enjoying Bonfire Night:
'In the evening we went round to the Cummings' to have a few fireworks. It began to rain, and I thought it rather dull. One of my squibs would not go off, and Gowing said: 'Hit it on your boot, boy; it will go off then.' I gave it a few knocks with the end of my boot, and it went off with one loud explosion, and burnt my fingers rather badly. I gave the rest of the squibs to the little Cummings boy to let off.'
And I've just discovered that there's an online version of the Diary.

History

A historic day then - the day when, in 1605, Guido Fawkes and his gang of prototerrorists were thwarted in their attempt to blow up Parliament. This used to be a big deal in England, with every household making some attempt at a firework display on the night, while boys had the pleasure of lobbing bangers and jumping jacks around at will. Those days are gone now - when did you last see a 'Penny for the Guy'? Except among the pope-and-pikey-burning villages of the Lewes area, Bonfire Night is a sanitised, municipalised affair, a pyrotechnic display conveniently held on the nearest Saturday. The November 5 tradition seems to have been edged out of the popular calendar by Halloween, that interloper from America.
Ah yes, America. That election thing... Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be middle-aged and cynical was very... No no, enough of that - it was the right result, the inevitable result (though the Dem stranglehold on Senate and Congress is worrying). McCain was totally outcampaigned and looked old and confused (if only he'd beaten W to the nomination in 2000...). Indeed the McCain campaign peaked with his fine concession speech - which is not quite how it's supposed to go. Heaven knows what kind of president Obama will make - I just hope he doesn't turn out to be, beneath the glamour and the eloquence, Jimmy Carter mark 2. I hope he gets off to a better start than Bill Clinton did. And I hope above all that the psychos of Al Qaeda don't decide to test his mettle early on with one of their trademark atrocities. For now, let's look on the bright side,and rejoce that America has yet again proved that, in the final analysis, it's a resoundingly Good Thing.

Almost Hair-Raising

An interesting find from the jungles of Patagonia, which seems to suggest a major rethink of hydrocarbons is overdue. What I particularly like is the quote from the scientist, who noted that 'almost every hair' on his arms stood up (no doubt like quills upon the fretful porpentine). He must have been counting...

88:88

Apologies for not blogging yesterday. I was in one of those sorry states of mind/body when the only realistic option was mindless physical labour to the accompaniment of Radio 4, so I spent much of the day cleaning the kitchen. I hope this sorry state wasn't related to the catastrophe that befell on Friday night, when I arrived home expecting to slump in front of Neil Young Night on BBC4, and found that my digital cable box had comprehensively packed up, displaying the straight eights - 88:88 - that identify a box as bound for the digibox graveyard. It could not be fixed until today - which is why last night, with only the wasteland of terrestrial TV to scour, I ended up watching Prescott: The Class System and Me on BBC2.
This two-parter was made in the over-familiar 'journey' format - Nick Cohen nails it brilliantly here - but with the novel difference that Prezza's 'journey' was entirely circular, as he had already made up his mind about the class system, and nothing anyone said to him about it was going to make any difference. Time after time, the people of all classes that his researchers had lined up for him to talk to blew all his class-war assumptions out of the water - but would Prezza take any notice of that? Of course not. He knew the 'British class system' had held him back - otherwise how could a man of his astounding abilities rise no higher than deputy prime minister? - and that was that, at the end as at the beginning. In the course of this 'journey', the Prescott shoulder only accumulated more chips. The sole interesting or attractive thing about this waste of airtime was Pauline Prescott. The mystery of how she puts up with her appalling husband must still be exercising all who saw this series.
Still, the BBC can come good sometimes, even on terrestrial TV. Laurence Rees's latest, WWII: Behind Closed Doors, which is coming soon, is a superb account of Stalin's making and breaking of alliances in the course of the war. And of course there's always Radio 4, which for all its annoying ways, is still something of a national treasure - especially when it has the gloriously sour Ed Reardon's Week (a comedy that cuts across the grain of the BBC and all it stands for - it's a miracle it was ever commissioned). With Ed Reardon for company, cleaning the kitchen was a postive pleasure. Therapeutic too.

Herons - Not What They Used to Be...

After yesterday's relentless rain, a morning of pale pearly sunlight, diffused through thin cloud. As I crossed the park, this light was showing the still rain-wet autumn trees to glorious effect; the willows in particular, leaves shimmering, seemed barely substantial. Nearer at hand, the fiery reds of cherry and maple, set off by dark masses of yew... By the river a man was throwing bread to the ducks - and to the resident heron, who was eagerly fighting off the competition, grabbing chunks of bread and knocking them back with a fling of the head. This is something I never thought, in my younger days, I'd see. Then a heron was a notable sight - a strange lanky outsize thing in the middle distance, unpacking an improbable quantity of wing and flapping heavily away. I remember I once found, bizarrely, a heron's skull, picked quite clean, by a river bank. I kept it for some while, even did a drawing of it, which I think I still have somewhere...
The heron then was strictly a country sight - though this was not always so. Herons are still a presence in W.H. Hudson's Birds of London, and he recalls the great herneries that lasted into the closing years of the 19th century, despite the best efforts of chaps with guns. But in the following century, with the Thames polluted and the wild wet places disappearing, herons, along with cormorants and kingfishers, left town, returning decades later to a cleaner river with plentiful fish. The next stage of the great reconquest came about with the spread of the Eighties fad for 'water features' (remember Charlie Dimmock?) and garden ponds, offering rich pickings for an early-rising heron. Now this spectacular bird is a commonplace sight of suburban London - and has so far lost its dignity as to take bread as if it were a municipal duck. I shouldn't really be surprised - this particular heron, which haunts the ponds as well as the river, has always seemed pretty useless at fishing, spending most of its time slouching around to no useful effect, and fixing humans, even at very close range, with a beady and fearless eye. It seems it has got our measure - we're there to provide the food. Though I wonder if herons can thrive on bread alone...

Supremely Funny

I know I shouldn't, but The Onion's on such sensational form at the moment, and this one brought tears of laughter to my eyes - no mean feat on a grey Saturday morning. And the election coverage is just brilliant...

At Last - It's Here! A Caption Contest

As it's the weekend and nothing much is happening that isn't too depressing to contemplate, here's something to get your wits limbered...

Two Greats

Well, it's Vermeer's birthday today (1632), so why not? And it's also Keats's (1795) - an autumn baby - and it's autumn (and it's even being used on a commercial, read by the inevitable Roger McGough), so again, why not? It's easy to forget that a great poem - or a great painting - that we take for granted is indeed great.

Westfield and the Scourings

Yesterday, amid scenes of retail frenzy, a ghastly new shopping mall opened in Shepherd's Bush, of all places, as the splendidly named Harry Wallop reports. As a chap who deeply dislikes shopping and tries to buy everything online, I simply cannot understand what is going on here. When I was growing up, shopping consisted, reasonably enough, of going to the shops to buy something you needed or wanted, and that was that. When did shopping as a leisure activity, as an end in itself, come in? I think the answer is probably that it rode in on the first wave of Thatcherite prosperity in the 80s - and I fancy it was around that time that another incomprehensible phenomenon hit these shores: Halloween, hitherto unnoticed and uncelebrated by us Brits. Now it seems to get bigger and brasher with every year - why?
Shopping (in its modern sense) is often labelled a 'new religion', and there are certainly analogies to be drawn, especially when retail cathedrals like Westfield spring up and fill with worshippers. Perhaps what it comes to is this: that our glibly rationalist zeitgeist has hollowed out real religion to such an extent that all that remains are substitute observances (shopping, sport, celebrity worship, green faith) and the scourings - the ghosties and ghoulies of Halloween, the psychics and hauntings that are all over multichannel TV, and of course bloody Santa Claus. Don't get me started on that one...

The Pound Problem

I just walked past a Blue Plaque to Ezra Pound (off Kensington Church Walk), and it's his birthday today - Happy 123rd, Ez - (and, as it happens, his deathday on Saturday). So it seems only fitting to say a word. But what word? Am I alone in finding it very difficult to get any kind of a grip on Pound, to decide whether he is a great writer or merely a great figure? Like Byron (another one I can't get a grip on, come to think), Pound 'was much in the habit of fancying that all the world was spinning on his pivot'. For some time he was right, at least inasmuch as modernism as we know it would have had a different birth without him - and poetry at least owes 'il miglior fabbro' a huge debt for his work on The Waste Land. And yet, when it comes to reading Pound, the experience is patchy in the extreme. Leaving aside the problems of his rebarbative persona (the adjective could almost have been made for him), for myself I find the Cantos largely impenetrable - are they really worth the trouble? - and even the shorter verse of his imagist years often seems faded and artificial. This, however, is beautiful, I think...
Any views?

Stubble 3

Well, it seems that edgy old BBC has mishandled this one so spectacularly that the story's still making headlines and they've even lost one of these two precious specimens of 'talent' (and, for the time being, have as good as lost the other). This time the old tactic of issuing anodyne statements, setting the bureaucratic mills grinding and waiting for it all to blow over haven't worked. The BBC assumption that the real problem is not with them but with the Public's silly benighted attitudes never fitted the case this time, and they should have dealt with it swiftly and decisively. Yes I know - 'swiftly and decisively' are words that don't belong in the same sentence, the same world, as BBC management. Now that they've allowed it to blow up into a colossal row, they have predictably drawn their wagons into a circle. Astonishingly (well it would be if this wasn't the BBC) no senior executive (with one minor exception) has given an interview anywhere in the media. The gaze of the sclerotic, hypertrophied, barely mobile BBC is, as ever, turned inward on itself. The controller of Radio 2 has let it be known that she'll resign if any of her production people are sacked. This can only mean that she thinks the Ross/Brand broadcast was acceptable - in which case it would be better if she did go. We should remind ourselves that what those two did was probably illegal, and the broadcasting of it was certainly a massive editorial misjudgment - and symptomatic, as the scale and duration of this row have demonstrated, of something very wrong, especially with the BBC but also with the whole of broadcasting.
Well, I've always said that no good would come of a BBC whose Director General sports stubble all over his face.